Hephzibah watched it play out from the pavement. Miss de Vries emerged from the house, shoulders bare, eyes on the crowd. A cry went up: “Are you safe? The fire!”
“There is no fire,” she said to those near at hand. “And no cause for alarm. Everybody should go home.”
Disbelief and confusion rippled out across the crowd. It was strange, thought Hephzibah, watching Miss de Vries: this tiny creature, guarding the front porch. It was the men who tried to push their way in first. Shepherd. Then Lord Ashley. But she held her hands to the door frame, a small smile on her face, barring the way. Hephzibah couldn’t hear what Lord Ashley said. She only saw what everybody else witnessed, too. His betrothed didn’t bow to him, didn’t bend: she sent him on his way.
Mr. Lockwood was next. He knifed his way across the pavement. But Hephzibah was on him. “No, no,” she murmured, gripping his arm. He swung around, startled. “Come with me.”
He resisted. “What on earth?” He shook her off.
“I can assure you,” she said, keeping her voice low, “it will be worth your client’s while.”
Earlier, while the crowds were surging outside the house, Winnie had grabbed Hephzibah. She’d given her the paper, pressed it right into her hands. “We’re going to put this right,” she’d said. She was out of breath, eyes fierce, clinging to the Inventory. “I promise you. On my honor.”
Hephzibah had unfolded the paper, reading the names: Eunice, Eileen, Ada... It had stopped the breath in her throat. “When?” she had said, voice dry.
“Now,” Winnie had said. “We’re going to fix it now.”
So Hephzibah led Mr. Lockwood to Tilney Street. The dessert trolley was laden high with trifles. They smelled sour, as if they’d begun curdling in the heat. She closed the door behind Mr. Lockwood with a firm and uncompromising click. “What on earth,” he said, “is this all about?”
Hephzibah kept her hand over her veil. She took a piece of paper from her sleeve. “Crawl over here,” she said with disdain, “and have a read of this.”
He took it from her outstretched hand, scanned it carefully, from top to bottom. She guessed lawyers always did that with pieces of paper. “It’s a copy,” she warned him. “Don’t bother doing anything silly with it.”
Clearly, it required a whole long minute for him to comprehend it, to really take it in, line by line. Name by name. “What do you want?” he said at last, looking up, face ashen.
Hephzibah leaned forward. She felt something uncoiling inside her. It wasn’t glee; it wasn’t giddiness. It was tiredness. Fatigue, bone-deep. Grief: for herself, and all the others.
“Never underestimate the kitchen girls, Mr. Lockwood,” she said. “They’ve got brains the same as anyone. They see everyone coming and going.”
Miss de Vries stayed at the front door for a very long time. People kept coming. “Miss de Vries, are you quite all right? Miss de Vries, are you quite well?” She ignored them. She examined the stained glass and tried to close her ears to the noises behind her. She wondered idly whether they might tell her they had finished. They didn’t, of course. The sound of footsteps simply faded until there was nothing left, and she was alone in her vast and desolate home.
She went straight to the second floor. The chill shocked her: the ballroom was like an icehouse, all the windows to the garden thrown open to the morning breeze. She searched for signs of damage, but there were none. Everything she owned had disappeared without a trace. She felt the queer urge to laugh, to howl.
Her bedroom was as they had promised: untouched. Only the bureau had been disturbed. She went to it. First job: to gather her personal funds.
The top drawer was empty.
She reached into the compartment, as if the banknotes had magically shrunk, as if someone had kindly rolled them up for her.
It wasn’t pain she felt. It was something different. She sat down on her vast and rumpled bed.
Miss de Vries had been betrayed before, by Papa, but that had felt different altogether, a burning sensation in her heart, her skin, as if she’d been dipped in white spirit. Now she felt only short of breath, as if squeezed into an airless box.
I consider this arrangement terminated, she thought, and went back downstairs.
She stayed indoors, sitting on the grand escalier, and waited for Lockwood to return. She heard Cook haranguing him on his way through the door. “Is Madam ruined, sir?” she cried. “Will we be paid?”
Miss de Vries couldn’t catch his response. He slammed the door, the echo reverberating through the house. He looked ghastly. Gray, and drawn, and yet strangely wild-eyed. Vulture. He was loving this. Chaos meant more work for him, for his kind.
“I need you to go to Lady Ashley,” she said, not bothering with greetings.
He jumped. Perhaps he expected her to be upstairs, lying in a swoon.
“Why?” he asked, eschewing pleasantries, too.
“I want to ensure everything is proceeding as planned.”
“Everything relating to...”
She turned the full force of her stare onto him. “My marriage.”
“I am not sure this is the best time for that.”
“No day like today, Mr. Lockwood.”
“You were very terse with Lord Ashley,” he said. “You denied him entry to this house.”
“It’s my house. It’s my prerogative.”
“You barred his way. In public. Everyone saw you do it.”
“Can anyone possibly blame me? I have suffered the most enormous shock.”
“You don’t seem shocked,” he said.
“Go and see Lady Ashley,” she ordered. “Go and do it now.”
He gave her a long, strange look, almost as if he were sizing her up, deciding where to hang her. He said, “A lady residing very near this house has certain papers in her possession. Papers documenting visitors to this house.”
“Visitors?”
He didn’t reply.
At first she didn’t understand. And then she saw the way he pressed his lips together, taking the utmost care not to speak a word before she did.
“Ah,” she said. She felt the world tilting, turning, getting ready to drag her under its wheels.
He said, “You’ll need a lawyer, of course.”
Dawn arrived, sleepless, cloudy and unreal. By nine o’clock a stream of lawyers had crammed themselves into the empty, echoing winter garden. They’d come out of the drains like rats running toward a carcass. Miss de Vries hovered beside Lockwood.
“I’m innocent,” she said.
Lockwood said nothing. No one had accused her of anything. But she knew someone was drafting the story, drawing up the terms. A tale of girls, and gentlemen who enjoyed them, and those who aided and abetted it all...
“I’m innocent,” she said again, and surveyed all the gray-faced, gray-suited men ranged out before her. “I’ve harmed no one. I know nothing.”
Lockwood made his face a mask. “About...?”
Miss de Vries wished then very badly to be alone. She stood up from her seat, and went to the vast bay windows overlooking the park. Lockwood moved away from her, as if she were infectious, as if she carried plague.
She put her hands on the window ledge and surveyed the road. In the old days Papa would drive up in his carriage, and later in his gigantic motor car, and she would wave to him. He’d squash his hat down over his head, pretending not to see her. It made her laugh in delight. He was always playing jokes and games. All the things she loved, when she was small. Before she understood that he wasn’t joking. That he wasn’t looking, that he hardly thought of her at all.
It would have been easier if she felt any self-pity. If she felt the urge to weep. It might have made her able to exist inside her own skin. But the only thing she felt was dread.
Nothing had changed yet. Lockwood was grim-faced but clear. Any question of illegal business would need to be properly charged, and in due course clear the courts, and the implicated parties had the best attorneys in London. Yes, there would be newspapermen outside the house from dawn to dusk, and inspectors pouring in from Scotland Yard, and not a single neighbor would call on her. The house would be tainted by gossip, speculation, all things horrid. But surely it would pass?
“Go for a walk,” said Lockwood. “Let the neighbors see you. No use hiding away indoors.”
Why not? She still had her chauffeur, and her motor, and her faithful footman. And her trousseau, come to that. She picked out the crepe with jet. Alice never did take it, she supposed, throat tightening. The girl had vanished. She remembered the pressure of Alice’s fingers, the scent of her skin, and she felt something hollowing in her chest. She put on her gloves, and a hat, and William walked behind her down the road, saying nothing.
A small, rackety motor carriage drew up beside them, incognito—and evidently, by design. She saw the dark maroon-colored leather, stains all over the silverwork. Everything is tarnished, she thought, laughing inwardly. Everything in the world is spoiled.
“Lord Ashley,” she said, voice steady. She was astonished to see him. If she were him, she would have stayed home. She would have preserved the greatest possible distance from this house, for safety, for reputation.
William was watching her. He put out a hand to her, a tiny bit of kindness.
She brushed him away and stepped into Lord Ashley’s motor with a smile.
Lord Ashley wore a dangerous expression as he steered the Victoriette. He didn’t ask her how she was, what she was feeling. Didn’t speak a word about the house, or what had happened to it, at all.
“Fancy chap you had carrying your things, there.”
“William?” she asked.
“Tall sort of fellow. Don’t much like the way he looks at you.”
“I hardly notice him.”
“I wouldn’t let a wife of mine keep a handsome chap like that around the house. You’ll have to get used to potbellied pigs if you plan on making a decent marriage.”
If? She pressed her lips together, controlling herself.
“Your man Lockwood came to see Mother this morning.”
Miss de Vries grew still. “Did he?” she said, looking out at the park.
“What’s all this about a list?”
The carriage rattled as it took the hard turn at Hyde Park Corner. Miss de Vries remained silent. But he waited for her to speak.
“List?” she said, at last, throat dry.
“I’m not on it,” he said, giving her a sideways glance. “Naturally.”
It astonished her, his boldness, his breathtaking confidence.
“And your man Lockwood says he’ll make sure it stays that way. He wanted to offer his help.”
“Help?” She couldn’t avoid the sharpness in her tone. “He’ll put conditions on you for that.”
“We’ve put conditions on him. Mother’s strict about things like this. We don’t want any taint on the family, no suggestion we’re covering anything up.” He gave her a fast look. “We’ve all heard rumors about your father’s funny business. Somebody should go to the police.”
Miss de Vries turned, clutching the side of the carriage. “Why on earth,” she said, “would you want to do that?”
“It’s my duty,” he said smoothly, “as a Christian.”
He arrowed the carriage into the park, hurtling over rough ground. “I expect Lockwood’ll come and tell you the rest himself. We’ve torn up the contract. With you, that is.” He braked, hard, and Miss de Vries felt her stomach jolting.
He turned, expression as flat as she could make her own. “Thought I’d do the decent thing and tell you myself.”
Lockwood was waiting for her in the front hall. He hadn’t removed his gloves. “Miss de Vries, I regret to tell you, I think I must withdraw my counsel.”
She wanted to press her thumbs into his throat, stop him from breathing. She knew she could do it. “You’ll survive,” she said, “won’t you? You loathsome little cockroach.”
Lockwood grimaced and raised a hand, silencing her. “Ah, Shepherd.”
A door had opened. Mr. Shepherd lumbered slowly in. He glanced at Lockwood, then his mistress. “Keys,” he said.
The air chilled.
“What?” said Miss de Vries.
Shepherd’s mouth was working furiously, eyes ablaze. “Keys, miss. I’ll need to take your keys, for safekeeping. While the police are looking into everything.”
To her credit, she told herself later, she didn’t act as though the wind had just been knocked out of her sails. She put her hand in her pocket. “I only have this one,” she said, plucking her single key, the one that was for the garden door. “As well you know.”
She bent her knees a little, and then she threw it across the hall. It hit the marble with a gentle clang, skidding past Shepherd’s feet.
“Fetch,” she said, with disdain.
This wasn’t over, she promised herself, hands shaking. This wasn’t the end.